News

Australian GP: Grip issues destroy qualifying

Saturday’s qualifying practice at Phillip Island ended with a bitter disappointment for Jonas Folger, after he was able to put in a great show during the previous free practice session.

Like the previous day, conditions improved during daytime, but with the big difference that asphalt temperatures increased more with the start of qualifying than at the same time the day before. Maybe this was one of the reasons, why Folger and his crew struggled with lack of rear grip. The 22-year Kalex rider will tackle round 16, which is already the third last race of the season, from 14th spot on the grid.

“I’m incredible disappointed. We were so strong during every session and during qualifying, we were not able to improve – not only in respect to lap times, but also for the whole package. Until this moment, we were able to improve continuously, even just in small step sometimes. But this afternoon we were not even able to match our lap times from this morning, while all other rivals improved significantly. This bothers me most, that is something I can’t handle. At the moment for qualifying temperatures were a bit higher than during FP3, but it was predictable. Despite of this we struggled with lack of rear grip. Whatever we tried during the 45 minutes, we couldn’t find a solution for this. More or less we were working in the wrong direction with every trail we did until that point we ran out of time. Hopefully we are able to find a solution till tomorrow, because I want to round up this weekend in style – which went so well until this afternoon’s qualifying – with a strong result to keep our momentum.”